KARLSRUHE, Germany, March 3 /PRNewswire/ --

- Web Conferences for Customer Support at SAP Save Time and Money

Global Customer Support at SAP supports more than 42,000 customer
organisations that use over 320,000 systems worldwide. To effectively support
the customers in a timely and cost-efficient manner, SAP decided to augment
the collaboration functions in SAP Solution Manager with Web collaboration
tools from Netviewer. When a customer needs assistance, Netviewer enables
rapid interaction with the customer by making Web conferences as natural as
picking up the telephone.

Situations include user error, problems with response times, and the need
for rapid support when launching a new application. Whenever an SAP customer
sends a message that does not clearly specify the problem, employees from the
SAP Active Global Support organization (SAP AGS) first analyze the situation
with diagnostic tools included in SAP Solution Manager and then start a Web
conference with Netviewer. This approach resolves inquiries much faster and
more efficiently than before. "It is a tremendous advantage to basically be
able to look over the customer's shoulder no matter where he or she is in the
world", according to Helmut Fieres, Vice President of Service and Support
Infrastructure AGS at SAP. By combining the diagnostic capabilities of SAP
Solution Manager (which is integrated into SAP support systems) with the
communication capabilities of the Netviewer solution, tedious technical
analyses are now a thing of the past, just like repeated exchanges of
messages or the wasteful practice of experts flying to the customer's
location. According to Mr. Fieres, without exception customers have reacted
positively to conference-based support.

More than 2200 employees at SAP Global Customer Support use Netviewer
every day. They turn to the Web collaboration tools particularly when
asynchronous handling of a customer inquiry would take too much time and
result in a large amount of nonproductive communications. "Sometimes
customers even specifically request a Web conference as an alternative to
speaking on the telephone when they want to discuss the problems they're
experiencing", explains Mr. Fieres.

German-based SAP runs Netviewer one2one and Netviewer one2meet on servers
that are part of its own service and support landscape. All support employees
around the world have direct access to the Netviewer solutions. The same
applies to partners who provide customer service. In fact, using a Web
conference has become as natural as making a telephone call. The number of
Netviewer sessions totals several hundred each month.

In Mr. Fieres' view, the greatest benefit lies in direct interactivity
and the fact that - thanks to customized adaptation - the session is
established through the same pathway that SAP uses to access the customers'
systems. "Netviewer is the ideal tool for easily and intuitively augmenting
how we communicate with our customers", according to Helmut Fieres.

About Netviewer:

Netviewer AG (http://www.netviewer.com) is the leading European 
manufacturer and provider of Web collaboration solutions. Founded in 2001 
in Karlsruhe, Germany, today the company employs more than 280 people at 
ten locations around the world. Netviewer software gives internet users a 
live view of a partner's screen so that text, spreadsheets, graphics, and 
other documents can be jointly discussed and edited. Visual real-time 
communication over the internet significantly reduces travel time and 
costs while increasing productivity.

More than 13,000 corporations and medium-sized companies in 55 countries
use Netviewer software, including Bayer, BMW, Deutsche Post, Ernst & Young,
SAP, Siemens, and Swisscom. The company is headquartered in Karlsruhe with
subsidiaries in Switzerland, France, Great Britain, the United States, the
Netherlands, Austria, Spain, Italy, and Sweden.

Presscontact:
    Netviewer AG
    Claudia E. Petrik
    D-76133 Karlsruhe
    Tel: +49(0)721-35-44-99-714
    E-Mail: presse@netviewer.de

    http://www.netviewer.com

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    E-Mail: k.renner@storymaker.de